Tag: social justice

Y’ Know I’m Not An Ally or An Accomplice Or Whatever You Wanna Call It

To marginalized groups that I don’t belong to because I’m good or empathetic or moral or whatever.   Like I fight for other people’s liberation because I know that my liberation isn’t coming without theirs.   I don’t believe you can “abolish all hierarchies… except this one” and like honestly?  I know that if we have hierarchy some other motherfucker is going to be over me.  It’s so incredibly unlikely that in a struggle for social power I, me, one in like seven billion or whatever, am going to end up the big winner, the top of the pecking order that it’s like… y’ know? 

The idea of not being allowed to step on people doesn’t bother me, what bothers me is that people are allowed to step on me and like unless I stop stepping on people we’ll never be able to gang up on the people that are allowed to step on all of us, beat the crap out of them and change the rules.

Fuck condescending altruism.  Incidentally this is why liberal social justice is a crock, and why communist social justice rocks.

So There Is No Ethical Consumption Under Late Capitalism

image

Or capitalism in general really but like I feel linking your identity with consuming products produced by brands that are like closely linked with and produce profits for public figures who are like notably shitty people, like shittier than the vast majority of celebrities is like… at the very least politically questionable.

IDK social media posts that are like “OMG Jeffree Star cosmetics” or what have you seem like… sorta fucked up because like… although whatever you consume it’s going to be linked to the evil of capitalist fuckery, Jeffree Star’s line is high end, most of these lines are, and so it’s not like how it’s not any less evil to buy expensive “fair trade” coffee and like you’re buying these products and displaying that you bought these products at least in part because of the image and identity associated with the company that produced them and so like… I’m just going to use Jeffree Star cosmetics as an example here because it’s a post about his products that brought this up.

Jeffree Star cosmetics is a relatively small line, produced pretty directly by its owner (Jeffree Star) and like very closely tied to him and his income directly and its brand is very much his brand and so like when you show off your Jeffree Star products you’re pretty thoroughly endorsing Jeffree Star and saying like “I’m proudly associating myself with Jeffree Star and like purchasing products from him because, at least in part, of the cache associated with this brand” and like even if you love the products for their color and formulas and what have you… there are other similar products out there, you’re choosing his and like Jeffree Star is very openly HORRIFICALLY racist and transmisogynist and all sorts of other shit.  He’s a shitty person.  He’s very openly, very publicly, very noticeably a shitty person and like even if you think he’s a talented makeup artist and his products are good… it’s not like there’s a shortage of great cosmetics products or talented makeup artists. 

Saying “Don’t buy from Jeffree Star or if you do at least have the decency not to endorse him as a person by showing off that you purchase shit from Jeffree Star which only adds to the general sense of the acceptability of Jeffree Star and the awful shit he says” is pretty different from saying “working class people need to consume less/spend money they don’t have to be *~*~*ethical*~*~*” and so like… IDK I do kinda judge people who show off products from him.

That said I’m also shitty about not buying makeup from companies that support the occupation of Palestine and like they’re usually much larger and probably have a further reaching effect on what happens in the world… so like maybe this is just performance politics and I should take my head out of my ass but like even then I sort of try to do my best… but like IDK I love makeup a lot too and I guess I sort of hate the way the beauty community largely ignores the political implications of what they’re buying/endorsing (especially because it is a community and so many products become trendy because people talk about them) and also the hypocrisy of how like so many beauty community people are like interested in “cruelty free” beauty products which shows that like they are capable of skipping out on trendy products for political reasons but then turn a blind eye to not only the actions of the companies in terms of how the cosmetics are produced and how that money is used (cause most people do that with most products and there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism) but also like the very public statements of people closely tied to the images of the brands they aren’t just consuming but are endorsing.

And like this is one of the reasons I feel pretty conflicted about doing beauty tutorials and the like, because like I’m conscious of the fact that like I’m endorsing the brand image and statements associated with the products I’m recommending and like the political implications thereof and like if you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know that like purity politics aren’t a thing I’m into participating in, and that I strongly believe the idea that you have to be morally perfect and the people you associate with all have to be morally perfect and always have been morally perfect in order to be a “good activist” or whatever is profoundly toxic and harmful to the possibility of affecting actual change but like it still feels like there is actually some complexity there and stuff to be conscious of.

So With 4Chan Apparently Shutting Down Soon

I was thinking about that era of internet culture and the “how much can you take?” ethos, like it was about showing yourself unphased by the grotesque, the morally repugnant… showing yourself to be unphased by everything, able to laugh at everything, having nothing you held sacred except for holding nothing sacred and IDK I feel like we haven’t done as much of a 180 as we sometimes think… I think certain aspects of the more toxic parts of SJ culture are actually similar, the whole “how much can you take?” thing, how much almost Maoist self criticism, how many jokes about privileged aspects of your identity and while like I think criticizing the powerful is important and like it being different making jokes about the powerful rather than the margenalized, I feel like sometimes we don’t examine people as whole people so much as crystalized discreet identities… and so like IDK working class people get thrown under the bus for using the wrong language even though they don’t have the resources to have known the right language and get like mocked and pushed out of shit and what not when they don’t have the emotional resources to take people being hard on them.

IDK I see other feminists doing it and I don’t like it.

Also Like “It’s Not My Job To Educate You” is great on an individual level

but not useful for an overall movement.

Cause like if you don’t tell people what you’re about your enemies will tell them for you and their version is gonna be inaccurate and shitty.

So like it’s not your job, but like if you wanna see tangible change, as a movement education is a really important facet of the work you need to do.

Also I’m more interested in pragmatic solutions than the most rage-y radical sounding rhetoric you can use.  As a survivor “Kill all rapists” ain’t doin’ shit for me cause A: You’re not actually gonna do it, motherfucker and B: That doesn’t address the systemic issues that cause rape in the first place.  It’s reactive rather than proactive.  Vengeance doesn’t cure PTSD.  Figure out a way to stop it before it happens.  You’re just saying that to sound radical without having to do actual work.

Also I feel like you can be sensitive without being super… reactive I guess?  Like you can pay attention to people’s feelings and what’s going on but also we can grow a rhino hide so we can fight back against bad shit without it destroying us.

The Fact That This SWERF/TERF Racist Pseudo-Feminist’s Accusations

Which were blatantly made to discredit a WOC who was calling out this white lady’s bullshit racism, are still fucking up the WOC’s ex partner’s (who is a really genuinely good person, with awesome feminist praxis, and also is Jewish and the accusations really play into a lot of anti-semitic stereotypes) life fucking sucks so bad.

My friend deserves so much better and I am so fucking sick of all these horrible blatant lies being believed.  I am sick of having to go in and show all the documents disproving her horrific lies.  I am sick of worrying my friend who is one of the kindest people I know and an incredibly effective organizer is going to fucking kill himself.

Fuck the leftist witch hunt bullshit.

Fuck you, toxic lying bossfucker who brought the whole thing back from the dead.

Fuck the people who won’t be happy till a good man is dead.

Oh also the accuser in this case is a white lady who defends men who hit women she deems to have ‘false consciousness’ (usually WOC) but calls anyone politically inconvenient to her rape apologists.